But within a year of releasing this album, Hendrix became the world’s largest grossing concert performer. And he was also revolutionizing guitar playing.

Hendrix’s Roots

So who is Hendrix? We know that he was a Seattle native, but there’s much more to him than that.

Hendrix got serious about music after he got out of the Army in the early ’60s and went on what was then called the “chitlin’ circuit” — we’d call it the R & B circuit — playing with people like Little Richard and The Isley Brothers. Here’s a track from 1965 when he was out with Curtis Knight, called “California Night.”

As Hendrix developed as a guitar player, getting better and better and sounding more like the Hendrix that we would come to know, he began upstaging the people he was hired to back up.

If you’re upstaging people like The Isley Brothers and Little Richard, it’s not really a good career move for a sideman. So Hendrix stopped getting hired after a while, and he was scuffling around for work, living in Harlem. And in what seems today like a genius move, he relocated himself to Greenwich Village where he really started to get support and recognition for his talent.

Here’s Where The Story Gets Good

And this is where the story really gets good. One night at one of his gigs, he met a woman named Linda Keith. She was a British fashion model, and, coincidentally, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. So you’d think she’d know a great rock guitar player when she saw one, and she did.

After the gig, they went out on the town and wound up dropping acid. It was the first time Hendrix had ever taken LSD. They spent the night tripping and listening, over and over, to a brand-new album called “Blonde On Blonde” by Bob Dylan.

The next morning, Hendrix basically woke up with a rewired head and a patron. Linda Keith was determined to help make him a star.

A Jumpstart To His Career

And this is where the real transformation happens, really quite quickly. Linda Keith hooks Jimi up with a manager, the manager takes him to London, puts a band together, and within a year, Jimi Hendrix becomes the world’s most famous rock guitar player.

But it’s not just about fame; with his guitar-playing, his style, his technique, his use of technology, he completely redefined what a guitar could do and the sound it could make.